Self-Determination Theory #1

Two dozen years ago Edward Deci and Richard Ryan created what they called, and is now recognized as, the Self-Determination Theory.  I had run across it several times over the year, but did not read anything on this theory.  I did not until Colin Cox referred to it during his 2013 Neuro-Semantic Conference Keynote presentation at Kaula Lumper.  Then hearing him speak and speaking with him about it, I realized I needed to study it.  So I did.

They call their theory an Organismic Dialectical Perspective.  To them “organismic” means that we humans are active, growth-oriented organisms.  “Dialectical” means that there are two poles: one being to fulfil one’s own nature, the other is the tendency to go toward and fulfil our social environments.  This theory is a view of human development wherein people are assumed to possess an active tendency toward psychological growth and integration (Deci, 2002, p. 8).  In Neuro-Semantics we call that the self-actualization drive which we believe is in everyone and is the experience of all people.  Deci and Ryan even describe it as we do: “actualizing human potentials.”

“Endowed with an innate striving to exercise and elaborate their interests, individuals tend naturally to seek challenges, to discover new perspectives, and to actively internalize and transform cultural practices.  By stretching their capacities and expressing their talents and propensities, people actualize their human potentials.  Within this perspective, active growth is complemented by a tendency toward synthesis, organization, or relative unity of both knowledge and personality.   Moreover, the integration of that which is experienced provides the basis for a coherent sense of self— a sense of wholeness, vitality, and integrity.” (2002, Handbook of Self-Determination Research, p. 1).

They even quote Maslow and Rogers and others in the first Human Potential Movement and acknowledge:

“This general view of an active, integrating organism with the potential to act from a coherent sense of self can be found in psychodynamic and humanistic theories of personality and in cognitive theories of development.  Angyal, 1963, Maslow 1955, Rogers, 1963, (p. 1).”

What they then do with Maslow’s hierarchy, however, is to reduce it and simplify it.  Personally I think they over-simplify it.  They sub-sum all of the human needs under three categories (Deci, 2002, p. 5):

Competence: To feel effective in your actions, capacities and so want challenges to extend competence, and able to achieve goals.  Do you feel able to achieve your goals?

Relatedness: To feel connected to others, to be cared for and to care for others, sense of belongingness, sense of community, to feel a need to belong.  Do you feel connected to others in a warm, positive and interpersonal manner?

Autonomy: To feel that you are the origin or source of your behavior, you act from your interests and integrated values, that you are responsible for you, to feel a need to express your authentic self and yourself as a source of action.   Do you feel at choice and responsible for imitating your behavior?

This changes the hierarchy of human needs which Maslow researched and developed.  It does so first by leaving out the survival level, putting pieces of it under autonomy and competence and then entirely leaves out a category for self and for self-actualization needs and values— the being-values and drives.  For “self,” the theorists put it under all of the categories and speak about the importance of internalizing and integrating one’s values (they call that organismic integration).  But worse, it eliminates the hierarchical nature of needs, the emergence of needs.

For the NLP Meta-Program of internal referencing versus external referencing and for the semantic meta-program of self-identification, they speak about people becoming ego-involved in an activity and its outcome (Korzybski calls this “identification”) then one’s feelings of self-worth…

“… become hinged to their performance such that they do the activity to prove themselves that they are good at the activity and thus are worthy individuals.” (Deci, 2002, p. 13)

We call that conditional self-esteem.  And where we urge for unconditional self-esteem, they speak about shifting to “task-involvement” that is, being involved with a task for the task itself rather than its implications for feelings of self-worth.  In some places in the writing, they seem to confuse self-esteem (being) with self-confidence (doing) and yet at other places in the writing they talk about unconditional value— no conditions.

The importance of autonomy shows up in their emphasis on self-regulation.  When a person internalizes a process and brings it in from external to make it internal, they develop self-regulation.

“The more fully a regulation is internalized, the more it becomes part of the integrated self and the more it is the basis for self-determined behavior.” (p. 15).  This requires meaning.  “People must grasp its meaning … and synthesize that meaning.” (p. 20)

In this model, people “grasp” meaning, they do not create it or manage it.  From the NLP and Neuro-Semantic perspective it is a strange thing for a model that is supposed to promote self-determination. Now self-determination theory centrally focuses on the reason why, the motive, behind doing whatever you do.  If you act for external reasons, instrumental reasons, for the end-state—then it is not internal.  To be self-determining requires that a person choose to strive for their goals from out of their own values and self-knowledge.  One danger is that of self-infiltration: a person incorporates the recommendations of an authority figure while believing they were his ideas (p. 81).  We call that the inside-out process—which is central in Neuro-Semantics and Meta-Coaching.

When it comes to the basic needs, the authors use Maslow’s language (fully functioning, thwarting, eudaimonic, well-being, self-actualization, vitality), and yet do not quote or refer to Maslow when they do so (Deci, 2002, pp. 22-24).  I don’t know why people do that.  Do they think that no one who has read Maslow will read their  work and see the plagiarism?  Anyway, they do speak about the importance of experiencing “greater organismic thriving and health” as a bottom-up process.  Well-being is enhanced in this way as it arises from the lowest need to the highest.

Autonomy is a need of tremendous value.  They write that when people are autonomous, “people experience themselves as valuable for being who they are” rather than doing a particular activity.  From there, a person can then seek out various activities which the person values and do them for that reason.  In some of the research by Edward Deci, he discovered this:

“… rewarding people for engaging in enjoyable, fun activities decreases their likelihood of future engagement in these activities.” (2002, p. 132)

This is what Colin quoted in his Keynote when he presented a challenge to what most of us think we know about motivation.  Here is the shocker: External rewards reduces internal motivation!  Now imagine the implications this has for parenting, for coaching, and for training.  Where the writers of this theory go next is to the problem of “social contagion.”  What does that mean?  It means that when you pursue an activity “for its own sake,” this will be a compelling human phenomenon.  But when you pursue an activity for a compelling social reason, it undermines your personal autonomy and shifts  your “locus of causality” from inside to the outside.  That’s not good.  That will decrease your intrinsic motivation.  Stunning, isn’t it?

Suppose you actually wanted to reduce a person’s motivation.  What would you do?  The authors write this:

“…if people are induced to ascribe boredom and obligation to a task, they are less intrinsically motivated than if they ascribe enjoyment, challenge, and interest to the same activity.  Labeling an activity as work increases intrinsic motivation for those who held positive attitudes toward work compared to those who do not. (p. 143)

“Deci found that rewarding people for engaging in enjoyable, fun activities decreased their likelihood of future engagement in these activities.” (p. 132)

Now we are getting to meaning (semantics).  They speak about it in terms of labels and labeling.  Yet we know in Neuro-Semantics that what you attribute to an activity operates as its classification.  When you put something in a category (the meta-stating process) you thereby set the frame by which you understand it.  That’s why and how the frame determines the experience.  So what do you expect about any given activity?  Will it be enjoyable or boring?  Fun or work?  Be careful what you expect because your expectation (a meta-level state and frame) will set in place a self-organizing process.

As coaches, trainers, consultants, etc., this suggests that you nurture your client’s intrinsic motivation and internalization processes by encouraging them to take the initiative and develop their skills.  This is a non-controlling approach (rather than Rogers’ non-directive approach) because it is not being permissive or laissez-faire.  To be supportive in a way that encourages the other’s autonomy is to elicit from them why an activity is important, challenge them to step up to it, give feedback about how they are doing, etc.  For a client to be and feel autonomous he needs to perceive his locus of causality and volitional choice.   More about this in the next post.

Reference:

Edward L. Deci, Richard M. Ryan (2002).  Handbook of Self-Determinational Research, UK: University of Rochester Press.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Emotional Mastery Series #8

If you really want to master your emotions -self-actualize. That is, make real (actualize) your best version of you so that you become as Carl Rogers said a “fully functioning person” and as Abraham Maslow said you access your “full humanness.” And if you do this, what will you feel? How will you handle your emotions? What will be different about your emotional life?

Well, first and foremost, you will have lots of energetic vitality. By gratifying your basic needs truly (and not falsely or through distortions) and adequately (sufficiently, not perfectly or one-hundred percent), those driving impulses (“needs” or requirements for living) will be gratified and “go away” thereby allowing the next level of drives to emerge. And after the levels of basic needs the self-actualization needs emerge. And when these are the inner driving impulses of your life-then you will be living passionately with a strong sense of purpose, inner value, and joy.

In self-actualizing you will be giving accurate meanings to your basic and higher needs which will enable you to truly and adequately gratify your inner impulses and drives. As you then learn effective and adequate coping skills, you will satisfy those needs which, in turn, will release your energy and vitality. That’s the design of your “needs” as well as the sign that you have gratified them truly and adequately.

The vitality that you will be feeling will be an energy to live fully, to be your best self, and to strive to contribute and make a difference. That’s what “self-actualization” means and if I belabor this, it is because of the myth that connects it to selfishness. The truth is that self-actualization is not about you, it is through you, but paradoxically not about you. This vitality involves experiencing those moments that Maslow called “peak experiences.” These are those little moments that happen to everyone (or nearly so) in which, for that moment, you sense that “life is good, it is precious, it is sacred.” And in that moment, you are again “in love with life” and are “surprised by joy” (C.S. Lewis) and are able to appreciate freshly as if for the first time, again.

All of this is one side of the self-actualizing emotional life. There is another. The other involves being able to experience your emotions- all of them, the negative ones as well as the positive ones- fully and accurately. And as you do so, you lose your fear of any of these emotions. After all, they are just emotions- just the somatic or bodily experience of the meanings being activated in your mind-body system. And now you can use the negative emotions for their best value- to stop, look, and listen and see where you need to make some life adjustments.

Now as a self-actualizer, you can much more effectively and efficiently use your fear, anger, sadness, stress, frustration, vulnerability, tenderness, etc. to be more fully alive and more fully human. Now you can allow yourself to fully experience the emotions without being overwhelmed by them or think that you are going to “lose control.”

By self-actualizing, what you will feel will be more appropriate to the contexts and situations of your life. Here’s what Abraham Maslow said about people actualizing (making real) their inner drives and integrating what could be dichotomies. This came after his study of the fully human self-actualizing subjects that he studied:

“It seemed to me that … it could be traced back to the relative absence of fear in my subjects. They were certainly less enculturated; that is, they seemed to be less afraid of what other people would say or demand or laugh at. They had less need of other people and therefore, depending on them less, could be less afraid of them and less hostile against them. Perhaps more important, however, was their lack of fear of their own insides, of their own impulses, emotions, thoughts. They were more accepting than the average. This approval and acceptance of their deeper selves than made it more possible to perceive bravely the real nature of the world and also made their behavior more spontaneous. … they were less afraid of being laughed at or of being disapproved of. They could let themselves by flooded by emotion.” (1968, Toward a Psychology of Being, p. 140-141).

About what happens to the experience of anger in a self-actualizing person, Maslow described the change in this way:

“In the healthier person, anger is reactive (to a present situation) rather than a characterological reservoir from the past. That is, it is a realistic effective response to something real and present, for instance to injustice or exploitation or attack, rather than a cathartic overflow of misdirected and ineffective revenge upon innocent bystanders … Anger does not disappear with psychological health; rather it takes the form of decisiveness, self-affirmation, self-protection, justified indignation, fighting against evil, and the like.” (1968, p. 162)

“The ability to be aggressive and angry is found in all self-actualizing people, who are able to let it flow forth freely when the external situation ‘calls for’ it.” … “a child should learn not only how to control his anger, but also how and when to express it.” (1968, p. 195)

Emotional Mastery Series

•  What is an Emotions (#1, 2 & 3)
•  Pseudo-Emotions (#4)
•  Emotional Continua (#5)
•  Emotional Tolerance (#6)
•  Don’t just feel, Do Something! (#7)

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.